The wind blasts with gusts of spite that send the bike wandering from line to line. The concept of confidence scurrying with each untimely breath. Uneasily I try to tuck behind the fairing, minimize the surface area. But it’s no use. The wind it seems trumps all on day like today.
Trying hide from the chaos, I squeeze harder into the tank. Duck a little bit more. Tighten up. Shutter and hide. Yet it’s an utterly worthless activity - futile in fact - because right now the world is a storm and I’m simply being caught up in it.
As the swirling, chaotic, maddening adventure continues the road dives down the back half of the hillside and returns to the valley floor. As the vistas fall away and the orange groves grow taller, I find myself imagining a more enjoyable moment. A more magical moment. A more peaceful moment. Something that feels less work like and more relaxing. But then the next gust hits, tosses me from one edge to the other, and it becomes clear that greatness is simply not meant to be. Taking stock of the situation, I find myself subconsciously backing off on the throttle because tempting fate today doesn’t seem completely prudent.
Three corners later, once the bike and I have mellowed out and found what little rhythm exists, my mind starts running through the last several days. It’s been a wondrous whirlwind of activity lately, filled with more good then bad, yet the longer the ride lasts the more I find my mind focusing on a recent interview we shot with a rather well known Superbike rider for a new project we’re working on.
For the moment I can’t really get into specifics about the project, but amongst the idle conversation the concept of real world speed came up. As we started chatting ‘he who shall not be named for the moment’ (jeesh this sounds like Harry Potter doesn’t it? 
) said something that continues to catch my ear, “People tend to think all of us racers are crazy and we do everything fast, but that’s 100% wrong, once I leave the track I leave all that stuff behind. It just takes to much mental energy to go that fast”. As I mulled this over, the racer continued, “Matter of fact, 95% of the time I drive 5 mph under the speed limit and I think I’ve had one, maybe two, speeding tickets in the last fifteen years on the road…”
On the surface I would suspect that most folks would question this kind of logic - certainly the non-riding portion of the public probably would - yet the more the pro racer spoke about his views on speed, the more I found myself thinking that what he was talking about not only made a great deal of sense, but actually was echoing something that I’ve intrinsically felt for quite awhile but hadn’t verbalized. The faster I’ve gotten on the track, the slower I’ve become on the road. And this is especially true when it comes to driving. The sense of ‘needing to get somewhere’ fast seems to have dissipated over the years and these days I find that I’m much more apt to get somewhere when I get there as opposed to feeling the dire need to push it. What once felt like a thrill; Slamming the accelerator, hearing the engine whirl and seeing the landscape fly around the dashboard, no longer seems satisfy, which makes me wonder if once you’ve gone 150 down the back-straight on a track have you forever doomed the sensation that used to come with doing 75 miles per hour on an empty back road?
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I think you’re absolutely right, and while I don’t have that much track experience I definitely think it slowed me down on the road. Also, riding sport bikes in general has tended to slow me down in cars. My dad’s an auto writer so I get to drive all the hottest sports cars, but honestly, after you’ve experienced a few hard second-gear roll-ons from the back of a 1098 the latest Corvette (or whatever) just isn’t that impressive in my opinion.
Keep up the good work!